The Consumer Revolution, 1650–1800

The production, acquisition, and use of consumer goods defines our daily lives, and yet consumerism is seen as increasingly controversial. Movements for sustainable and ethical consumerism are gaining momentum alongside an awareness of how our choices in the marketplace can affect public issues. How did we get here? This volume advances a bold new interpretation of the 'consumer revolution' of the eighteenth century, when European elites, middling classes, and even certain labourers purchased unprecedented quantities of clothing, household goods, and colonial products. Michael Kwass adopts a global perspective that incorporates the expansion of European empires, the development of world trade, and the rise of plantation slavery in the Americas. Kwass analyses the emergence of Enlightenment material cultures, contentious philosophical debates on the morality of consumption, and new forms of consumer activism to offer a fresh interpretation of the politics of consumption in the age of abolitionism and the Atlantic Revolutions.

Indigenous Meanings of Provenance in the Context of Alternative Food Movements and Supply-Chain Traceability: A Review

This article reviews the concept of provenance from both contemporary and traditional aspects. The incorporation of indigenous meanings and conceptualizations of belonging into provenance are explored. First, we consider how the gradual transformation of marketplaces into market and consumer activism catalyzed the need for provenance. Guided by this, we discuss the meaning of provenance from an indigenous and non-indigenous rationale. Driven by the need for a qualitative understanding of food, the scholarship has utilized different epistemologies to demonstrate how authentic connections are cultivated and protected by animistic approaches. As a tool to mobilize place, we suggest that provenance should be embedded in the immediate local context. Historic place-based indigenous knowledge systems, values, and lifeways should be seen as a model for new projects. This review offers a comprehensive collection of research material with emphasis on a variety of fields including anthropology, economic geography, sociology, and biology, which clarifies the meaning of provenance in alternative food systems. It questions the current practices of spatial confinement by stakeholders and governments that are currently applied to the concepts of provenance in foods, and instead proposes a holistic approach to understand both indigenous and non-indigenous ideologies but with an emphasis on Maori culture and its perspectives.

Understanding How Tesla Leverages Twitter To Communicate Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility

As the media coverage of the global climate crisis grows, so does the act of climate conscious consumer activism. As a result, companies have turned to communicating their corporate social responsibility (CSR) on social media in order to leverage their sustainable activities and improve their corporate image. Twitter, specifically, is a popular social media platform for marketing and cultivating business to consumer (B2C) relationships. One company that has become a model of success for CSR on Twitter is Tesla. The findings of this study discover higher interaction around ECSR tagged tweets in combination with a high culture of sharing amongst Tesla’s followers. This study aims to discover how Tesla, an electric car and sustainable energy company, has made their Twitter page both informative and interactive when communicating their environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) agenda online. Keywords: Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility, Tesla, Twitter, Online Community

Understanding How Tesla Leverages Twitter To Communicate Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility

As the media coverage of the global climate crisis grows, so does the act of climate conscious consumer activism. As a result, companies have turned to communicating their corporate social responsibility (CSR) on social media in order to leverage their sustainable activities and improve their corporate image. Twitter, specifically, is a popular social media platform for marketing and cultivating business to consumer (B2C) relationships. One company that has become a model of success for CSR on Twitter is Tesla. The findings of this study discover higher interaction around ECSR tagged tweets in combination with a high culture of sharing amongst Tesla’s followers. This study aims to discover how Tesla, an electric car and sustainable energy company, has made their Twitter page both informative and interactive when communicating their environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) agenda online. Keywords: Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility, Tesla, Twitter, Online Community

Consumer movements, brand activism, and the participatory politics of media: A conversation

This is a scripted adaptation of a conversational podcast interview between Henry Jenkins and Robert Kozinets about contemporary consumer activism and its relationship to media studies. After the interview, the conversants agreed to develop the transcript of the conversation in order to be more relevant to a scholarly audience who are interested in how Jenkins’ ideas apply to the understanding and investigation of consumer culture today. The conversation frames and synthesizes a range of thinking around activism, fan studies, brand management, and consumer culture theory. Couched in the American context but containing themes that may also relate to global culture in the current moment, it covers the theoretical as well as the pragmatic concerns of many of the stakeholders in the world of contemporary consumer activism, from the activists themselves to the brand managers who respond to their actions to the creators who write the stories that inspire them both. Topics include the relevance of participatory culture today, anti-racism and the role of media, consumer conflicts with brands and the corporations who police them, the importance of civic imagination to civic engagement, differences between brand managers and story creators, consumer activism in the workplace, activist and participatory approaches to civic research, the nature of contemporary consumer activist movements, the impact of intersectionality, and the prefigurative possibilities for change today.